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Editor’s note: This address by Russian millionaire Boris Berezovsky, who is living in exile in London after becoming an enemy of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, was written in an emotional and aggressive style, using prison slang and other expressions that may be offensive. The translation only gives a vague idea of what he meant to say.


The original in the Russian language can be found on pravda.com.ua/articles/2010/02/17/4780786/. It is reprinted with permission from Ukrainska Pravda.

I am addressing you, the people on the margins [of Russia], to every one of you who supported [Victor] Yanukovych. You elected a crime boss as your Hetman. Moreover, he’s a young brother of the Big Brother.

I am convinced that this is not for long.

However, I cannot figure it out: how many mega-liters of slave blood must flow in the veins of each one of you, to be able to believe in this douche bag in the age of the Internet, the Large Hadron Collider and genetic engineering!

Stick your feather up your a-hole! You’ll be swooping into the stinking “gaping heights” of your past.

Your gene pool has survived worse genocides than this. But do remember in your mind-boiling dive that, while your chief Cossack is a crime boss, you will be living on the margins, not in Ukraine.

P.S. I would like to especially address the leader of democratic world, U.S. President [Barack] Obama and the ideologist of the modern Russian obscurantism [Vladimir] Zhirinovsky, who did not take direct part in the voting, but were among the first people to congratulate Yanukovych on his victory.

Dear gentlemen: I don’t perceive as accidental your solidarity to recognize a crime boss as the president of a great European country.

In the autumn of 2004, during the Orange Revolution, the political beau monde of the USA found out from Fox News and CNN reports about the existence in the center of Europe an independent state of almost 50 million people. But for some reason, they’re still convinced that the democratic Iraq and Afghanistan are more important than a democratic Ukraine.

Mr. Zhirinovsky, you’re much more consistent. You have never recognized Ukraine as independent.

I am asking you, Mr. Obama and Mr. Zhirinovsky, to remember the phrase of Franзois de La Rochefoucauld: “A politician is able to look forward only as far as he is able to look back.” Then you will shed your illusions about the “reset” button, as well as doubts that the future is in the hands of the Ukrainian, not marginal people.

It does not benefit you, dear sirs and word-wise politicians, to neglect history.